January 28, 2014

Time for a question to Myles Coker about the origins of a life that he had kept secret from the people closest to him.

How had he gotten started in the heroin trade?

Mr. Coker did not blink.

“It was back in the ’80s,” he said, when he worked for an illegal gambling business.

His son Clifton pulled his chair closer. “I’ve never heard this part of the story,” he said.

Neither had others at lunch at the National Arts Club on Friday. Among them were Mr. Coker’s lawyer, Harlan Protass, who got him out of prison at age 63, well ahead of the life term he was supposed to serve, and Roland Riopelle, the former federal prosecutor who had put Mr. Coker behind bars.

A star wide receiver in college who is still in excellent shape, Mr. Coker did not use drugs himself. He ran an entirely legitimate limousine business that had among its clients “The Cosby Show.” The parents of children he coached in Little League held parties to thank him for his devotion. His wife was a teacher, principal and textbook author; their two sons, Clifton and Kelvin, went through private elementary schools in Manhattan, Poly Prep high school in Brooklyn and top colleges, and have enjoyed professional success.

Unknown to all, Mr. Coker was a gentleman heroin dealer.

His work for an illegal gambling operation — he took bets on sporting events over phones in safe houses in the Bronx — brought him to the home of Anthony Damiani, an overseer of the operation, who lived in Morris Park. “Not at the beginning, but after a few years, all this cash was coming in,” Mr. Coker said. “Once they got into heroin, I was seeing the currency machine for counting cash. They had me carrying it in sacks.”

He was invited to set up distribution in Harlem, and after a few years, took up the offer. “Greed just took me,” Mr. Coker said. He eventually ran about five or six spots, a business that he said brought him about $25,000 in cash profits per month. His operation was a small offshoot of a spectacular heroin enterprise that went by the brand name Blue Thunder, which sold more than nine million glassine bags in about three years, worth about $100 million. At one spot on Brooks Avenue in the Bronx, $250,000 in heroin was sold between 4 and 10 p.m. every day, Mr. Coker said. Prosecutors charged that a mobster named Vincent Basciano, whose nickname was Vinny Gorgeous, was among those in charge; he was acquitted.

Mr. Coker’s heroin was supplied by the same people who packaged the Blue Thunder brand; his was stamped Exxon. Records kept by one particularly diligent member of the organization showed that Mr. Coker had been supplied with 691,430 glassine bags in 26 months. In time, 50 people, including Mr. Coker, were arrested. He was sentenced, under federal laws that are no longer in effect, to life without parole.

“He was just gone; we didn’t know where he was,” said Clifton Coker, who was then 10. By phone, the boys’ father told them he was away training a boxer. The boys’ mother, Deborah Coker, consulted a psychologist, who said the children should be told by their father of his whereabouts, but he did not disclose the details of his offense or that the federal authorities had written, “It does not appear that he will be discharged from said custodial sentence prior to his demise.”

Not until Kelvin Coker was at Amherst College and able to work the Internet did the brothers realize that their father was not supposed to ever come back. Their parents had split up before Mr. Coker’s arrest, but he had been a strong presence in their lives, and even behind bars he stayed in touch by phone every week.

The sons went on a campaign to find a way out of prison for their father, and hired Mr. Protass. With hearty letters from prison guards who praised him for his sterling record as a peacekeeper, and with legal filings by Mr. Protass that Judge Loretta A. Preska of United States District Court said were “some of the best papers I’ve seen,” Mr. Coker was resentenced in August to time served — just under 23 years.

Mr. Coker was not present for the hearing, but had prepared a speech in which he talked about being frustrated while in prison that his efforts to help a friend overcome drug addiction were being stymied by the “vultures” who fed his habit. Having seen the young man’s demons, he realized “that I was someone else’s,” he wrote.

When Mr. Riopelle heard that Mr. Coker had been released, he invited him to lunch. “I want to see people like him succeed,” Mr. Riopelle said.